


Young Blue Bodies/Old Red Bodies

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Break the Cutie, Gen, Possession, Verbal Abuse, Yuriev is a terrible person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So vain is the puppetmaster, to paint his own image onto the face of his puppet. Spoilers for Episode III.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Young Blue Bodies/Old Red Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> I... need to go write something happy now. This (painful) one's for you, oh sister of mine!

“You want to apologize,” Gaignun shut his eyes and turned away from the voice. “How quaint.”

_“It’s my fault.”_

It had been growing darker, in that little prison of his. It was only months ago that the bars had been wide enough for him to slip through unnoticed for a few hours—or days—before being placed not-so-delicately back inside. Those gaps had long since been covered and removed—he couldn’t find a single crack in the armor these days, leaving him relegated to curl up upon the hard floor and wait.

He could still feel things—his hands securing a gun, or brushing his now-ashy-blond hair. He could still see things—Salvators nodding at the words tumbling from his mouth in that foreign—poisonous—voice, or people dropping at his feet with gaping bullet holes in their once unmarked heads and chests. The guilt felt like his—even though the body did not. He was just an observer now, a wisp condemned to be pulled along by his father’s dangerous tide.

“Is that powerlessness I sense?” Yuriev had asked him once, standing alone in the room they shared with no one. “I should think it’s about time to give up on such pursuits, dear.” He could feel his hands slowly polishing the crevices of the sleek gun usually kept hidden at his side. It made him sick, but his physical body was not his to command, so the vomit simply welled up inside his heart.

He just wanted it to end. End before things got any worse than they had already become.

“Now, is it your fault?” Yuriev countered, his words bizarre in language, but full of conceit, “I do believe it is entirely my own doing. You are just the convenient means of transport,” He fastened the final button of that oh-so-familiar suit. “You flatter yourself to take so much credit for my actions.”

Gaignun shivered at this, and curled in tighter.

“Oh, don’t run now,” Yuriev’s rough voice was beginning to smooth out and sink, lower and lower until it became something more natural and familiar. “You’ll make this bit much harder if you do that— I’m actually in need of your ‘charms’ right now...” His feet moved soundlessly, carrying them to the half-mirror displayed beside his bed. A tiny fraction more of Gaignun ripped away—black hair and green eyes were looking back at him, yet they were not his own.

_“…You plan to go to them like this?”_

A cruel smile wormed its way across his face—it looked so unnatural sitting there—like their bodies and selves had been spliced together into a disgusting patchwork excuse for a being. He had truly become a puppet now—one that a vain puppeteer had dressed and painted in the image of his own prideful self. “It is much easier to win the trust of sheep when you wear a lamb’s pelt,” Yuriev chided. “If only I had been a better father to you—you might have actually learned something as useful as that.”

_“You—you can’t.”_ It was a hopeless plea that made him sound pitiful and wretched—he cursed himself for it a thousand times over, despite knowing that there was nothing he could do to hide such desperation.

Yuriev did not even spare the energy to reply, but only flattened the lapel of the suit, and strode out the door.

Gaignun’s eyes opened. He uncurled, clumsily rising from his exile to grip at the thick iron bars. His limbs felt awkward and heavy as he stirred, no more his own that the physical equivalents that his father now used.

_“You’ll massacre them.”_

“So I will.”

_“Please—“_

Gaignun’s hands slid from the bars as the force of Yuriev’s spirit overtook him yet a little bit more. His form—perceived only as his mind imagined it—trembled helplessly as his will slipped just a little farther away.

_“Come now,”_ Yuriev’s voice pounded in his head. It was far louder than it would have been, had he used his physical form to say it, but at least it was the harsh notes of his father’s tone and not a doppelganger of his own voice echoing back at him. _“You no longer possess the strength to use this body—at this point, any resistance serves only to wear away your consciousness quicker, making this little drama show more of a childish amusement than anything else.”_ Gaignun, in spite of being enraged by the taunts so carelessly thrown at him, found himself silenced—lashing out would be unwise, and as his father had said, detrimental to his own health.

“Good,” Yuriev spoke this short phrase aloud, hammering in the point with his own voice. Gaignun flinched, both at the finality of it and at the very notion of arguing with a man wearing his own skin. “Enjoy the show now… won’t you?”

‘Show’ was too twisted a term for what his father had in store. Wearily leaning against the walls of the mental cell, Gaignun watched as his body brought death to those it had once brought life. Although his will did not power the movements of this body, it was still his feet that strode down the Durandal’s halls, his lips that gave the sick orders, his hand that held the gun, and his finger that pulled the trigger again and again and again.

Gaignun screamed—he could not tell when or for how long, but a hand—his hand—no—Yuriev’s—soon covered his mouth and smothered him until he was silent and still.

“Chairman!” _Aidan_. The voice snapped him from the haze. He had met that boy a year ago—a young man, cast out by his family, who had found a home in the Kukai Foundation, and a role on its flagship. He was sweetand _prett_ y, with long lashes and short brown hair, and Gaignun had wondered, ever so wistfully, if he would ever be so lucky to meet a man like that, if he would ever have the time to even consider a relationship…

He let his eyes cloud over for a brief second, until Aidan was out of his sight and he could imagine for him a better fate.

The end came soon enough, at least for him, but with it came the bridge—and by extension, Mary and Shelley. A pang of guilt hit him—Helmer had meant the best, he really had, but the placement of that code was about to set off more suffering than he could have imagined. The sisters had understood the risks, understood their role, and claimed that they didn’t care, but…

The gun was pressed to Mary’s stomach, and a single shot rang out across the bridge. The horror of that action was plain and clear, yet it did not hurt Gaignun quite as much as the thought that immediately followed. He had known that Yuriev would use such measures—that was no surprise—but it only now occurred to him that even if she survived the ordeal, even if Shelley remained perfectly unharmed, there would now be permanent wounds in her mind that might never heal over.

Only his fingers could slip between the cracks of the bars, but he reached out anyway, as if the poor sisters might feel his empathy from that simple gesture, and perhaps not be injured quite so badly.

Dully, Gaignun heard the term “Arbiter Code,” but however distant, the two quiet words still clenched his very essence into tight and pained knot. He searched for some small fountain of energy, a hidden well that he might have missed somewhere in the depths of his consciousness, but quickly realized that he had done such a thing one too many times. All the wells in his desert had dried up, and there was neither rain nor flood to save him this time.

_“You knew this was coming,”_ His father’s voice taunted him, shooting painfully through his imagined skull. _“Yet you weep only now? Have you given up then?”_ A faded image of himself—no, Yuriev—had begun to pace the endless realm just outside of his imagined prison. 

_“…What is there to do?”_ Gaignun asked, casting his eyes up toward his father. _“You’ve taken all that is left of me.”_

_“There was nothing of you to begin with, dear boy.”_

A swell rose within Gaignun, spreading through his aching soul and pushing him up from his wretched state. He grasped the bars, and with them as an aid, heaved himself up so that he might stand eye-to-eye with Dmitri Yuriev, as he had so easily been able to do but one year ago.

“ _If I never existed,”_ He cast his gaze straight into Yuriev’s, unrelenting eyes until he could see some sort of crack begin to spider its way across his vile mask. “ _Then why am I locked here inside of you?”_

A wry smile spread across Yuriev’s face—it unsettled him, as twisted as they had become, the features he looked at were still the ones he had come to know as his own. What was that expression though—Mockery? Or another mask to hide the fact that he had recognized the truth—that Gaignun had at last slid a knife beneath his father’s armor.

It was a victory, however short lived—

“—Arbiter Code? I don’t know what you’re talking about... Just stop and…”

He laughed. “Very well. I said I didn’t wish for any suffering, but since you leave me no choice…” The cruel gleeful note tapered off. Yuriev’s speech had halted, and Gaignun’s vision began to blur—his prison cell soon crumbled and swirled away, blending with the blood-soaked environment that his material body stood in, until they were one and the same.

He gasped. Never had the cool air of a starship felt so bright and clean—every breath was like his first—it had seemed so long since he had last taken a breath and been able to call it his _own!_

“Mas—Master…” Eloquent Shelley fumbled with her words. “I don’t understand…”

Gaignun swallowed as a wave of nausea and fatigue overcame him, sending his hands out in an undignified flurry to grasp at the panel beside him for support. He wouldn’t last long—that much was clear.

“Give him the code…” He mumbled.

“…Pa-pardon?” Mary stammered back. In her state, she should not have even been speaking, but it was Mary Godwin, and god be dammed, she would get a word in.

“Just give him the code… please…” Gaignun searched their eyes in desperation. They were good. They were sweet and kind, and had already been given far too much suffering for their time—and how much of that had been his fault? If only… if only someone else had taken them in…

“Master Gaignun…”

“…Don’t—don’t worry. He would get it anyway,” He smiled bitterly. Oh, how he missed speaking with the two of them, with Jr, with a kettle shared among them and a computer at each of their fingertips.  They would chat and chat, and work had never been so enjoyable as those beautiful times where they had all been there together. “Please,” He begged once last time. “You’ve done enough… more than enough. I’m  so sorry… for…everything…” Then his stomach dropped as if he were about to retch, and his vision blurred like he was being tossed backwards into the wall while held perfectly in place all at the same time.

He didn’t even try to fool himself—the time was up, and that was as much as he would get.

_“Thank you,”_ Yuriev whispered genuinely, as Gaignun lay bent in his cell, the iron bars now nigh-impenetrable. _“For making that so very easy…”_

Of course. The sickening gratitude was only a confirmation for the dark suspicion that tumbled and knotted in his core—the puppet strings were now nailed into his limbs, and there was no way he could cut loose again. 

Gaignun wanted to cry in shame and anguish, but he could no longer find the strength to do even that.

_“Don’t hurt them…”_ He muttered desperately, and then shut the world from his view.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Go eat some cookies and think of Gaignun in Episode I? That's what I'll be doing!


End file.
